New Feature: Wowhead Website Achievements!

We love you guys. Seriously, if it weren't for our great community of users we wouldn't be nearly as awesome as we are today. The community of users posting comments, rating comments, uploading data using the Wowhead Client, submitting screenshots, and posting on the forums constantly help refine and maintain Wowhead as the indispensable resource that we've all come to know and love! We've decided to give back to you guys with our latest site feature: Wowhead Website Achievements!

Everyone loves earning achievements, right? Sure, they don't "mean" anything, but consider them a pat on the back and as digital props for your awesome work as a member of the Wowhead community! Website achievements are awarded for performing various tasks around the site, such as checking out our Blue Tracker, importing a character into our Profiler or just making a quality comment!

At launch there are a total of 37 website achievements, and a few of these achievements can be earned multiple times, so excessively awesome behavior will be recognized! We've even gone out of our way to retroactively award achievements wherever possible, so many of you will already have some impressive counts! Of course, achievements will only be awarded to registered users. If you're a lurker looking for little incentive to register your very own Wowhead account, now is better than ever!

Achievements are categorized into three levels which cleverly correspond with familiar World of Warcraft monetary values!

15 Copper Achievements - Copper Achievements are common and very easy to obtain. Many casual and regular users will earn various Copper achievements multiple times.

11 Silver Achievements - Silver Achievements are a middle ground between Copper Achievements and Gold Achievements: they are somewhat uncommon, but are still obtainable with a little effort and time.

8 Gold Achievements - Gold Achievements are very difficult to obtain; they require a lot of effort and are meant for our most dedicated users! Congrats in advance!

A list of all of the different achievements and their criteria, as well as who has earned them and how many times, can be found in the new Website Achievements category, found under the Community tab! Users can view their own achievements in the new Achievements tab found on the user page!

Achievements are listed in the order in which they are earned on your user page. If you want to see an alphabetical listing, check out the Website Achievements listing.

In addition, your achievement "count" will be displayed next to your username on all of your database comments, as well as in the user information section of your forum posts! Snazzy!

Of course, remember that these achievements are not to be taken seriously and they are by no means intended to be representative of your "value" on the site. We appreciate every single user who visits the site (especially those who use it on a daily basis) and realize of course that it's not in everyone's interest to contribute to the site, and we're totally cool with that. Don't worry, you're all still awesome.

Got an idea for an awesome Wowhead achievement? Found any errors or bugs? Think this is the worst feature ever and want to tell us? We appreciate your feedback just as much as any other contribution (heck, there's even achievements for it) and, as always, you can direct any of your concerns or suggestions to this thread or !

Website Achievements Knowledge Base

Do I get anything for earning achievements?Other than our undying love and appreciation? No, achievements are simply fun ways to show off your contributions to the website and any other 'feats' you may have performed! This feature is intended entirely as a fun way to promote user activity and contribution to the site.

How do 'Consecutive visit' achievements work? Do I have to visit it at least once every 24 hours?In order to keep your consecutive visit count going, you simply have to visit the site once per "day," at least one visit from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 CST. So, visiting it 1 second after midnight CST and visiting it again 47 hours later counts (but not after 48 have passed, obviously)!

What are secret achievements?They're secrets, duh! These are achievements that have undisclosed criteria, that is only revealed after the achievement has been obtained. Figure 'em out, or just wait until some boring people reveal how to unlock them on the forums (yeah, you heard me, boring!) - of course, nobody would spoil the fun like that, right? ;)

Why was <achievement> not awarded retroactively?Unfortunately, sometimes this was not possible to be done. Don't worry: there's only two "Feat of Strength" achievements - Early Member & First! - and they were successfully awarded to all eligible users.

Will I get to keep the achievement if I no longer meet the criteria (example: "Premium user" and I'm no longer premium)?Yes.

Achievements aren't achievements without awesome fanfare! Can I enable achievement sounds?Of course. The "Achievement earned" sound is disabled by default, but you can easily change this by simply clicking the sound icon at the bottom right corner of the achievement pop-up. You can also enable/disable achievement sounds at any time from your Account Settings!

Haven't I seen this idea before?We've been toying with the idea of site achievements for a while now as it felt like a natural extension from World of Warcraft. Our design was influenced by both World of Warcraft as well as the awesome Badge system over at the Stack Exchange network of websites. We'd like to think we did a pretty good job of augmenting their design ideas with that special Wowhead flare you've come to expect from us. :)

As an example, I should have that achievement twice for my contribution to the Paladin forum. However, rather than stickying every thread, we have a helpful threads thread where I (and many others) have had topics listed.

You may need to look retroactively at edits to those threads to ensure stuff that has been removed due to being outdated are counted, as well as adding in some function that auto tracks threads that are linked to in the first post of such threads.

No... I'm not shamelessly whining such that I get gold achievements...

Comment by Strafer

on 2011-02-09T14:39:06-06:00

Sweet :)

Comment by Annalisse

on 2011-02-09T14:40:12-06:00

I honestly thought I'd caught a virus as soon as I logged in.

Then I loled.

I thought it was some buggy pop-up ad :P

Comment by EpicDragon

on 2011-02-09T14:40:57-06:00

I honestly thought I'd caught a virus as soon as I logged in.

Then I loled.

I thought it was some buggy pop-up ad :P

Me too. But then I rushed to the bin.

Comment by Onimushua

on 2011-02-09T14:43:24-06:00

I like this idea and all, but itsn't this going to promote +1 posts/comments even more? And people voting on everything, and anything, for these shiny achivements?

Comment by Farmbuyer

on 2011-02-09T14:45:02-06:00

Heh, mine vanished before I could finish reading them and click to see what they were. Now I know. :-)

Comment by GVHB

on 2011-02-09T14:48:40-06:00

I like it, seems like it could be a very interesting feature.

Comment by Koper

on 2011-02-09T14:49:16-06:00

I like this idea and all, but itsn't this going to promote +1 posts/comments even more? And people voting on everything, and anything, for these shiny achivements?

We want to encourage users voting more; it's a good thing. There are no achievements that require you to have X posts or comments (without a specific rating too).

Comment by lankybrit

on 2011-02-09T14:51:01-06:00

There's a thread about this in Wowhead feedback, there's this thread, and obviously I can make my own, so I'm not sure where to critique this, but...

As an example, I should have that achievement twice for my contribution to the Paladin forum. However, rather than stickying every thread, we have a helpful threads thread where I (and many others) have had topics listed.

You may need to look retroactively at edits to those threads to ensure stuff that has been removed due to being outdated are counted, as well as adding in some function that auto tracks threads that are linked to in the first post of such threads.

No... I'm not shamelessly whining such that I get gold achievements...

They should have a 'Very Helpful' achievement, which you get from having your thread included in a helpful threads topic.

Cheers.

Comment by Azazel

on 2011-02-09T14:51:15-06:00

Awesome!

Comment by sjeesen

on 2011-02-09T14:51:19-06:00

i logged in and just got remembered i visit this site almost every day for a year now.way to go ;P

Comment by hoss

on 2011-02-09T14:53:18-06:00

I didn't close my browser but I was confused for a second.. Nice fun way to get the community involved.